The "Be a Better Member" mission ended on February 1st, and if you are one of the 3898 members who both bookmarked the Rules of Engagement and answered the poll about the rules, you should have received this badge:
If you didn't receive it, perhaps you only took one of the two required actions.
For those of you who participated, I want to thank you for completing the mission and also for taking the time to read the rules and think about what behaviors are permitted in the Community.
So what is the correct answer to the poll?
Well, out of the 4671 members who took the poll, I'm pleased to see that 95% of you had the correct answer:
I should never copy someone else's content without first getting permission from them.Not only that, you really should have that permission in writing, and you should credit them in your post.
For the 2% who felt it was OK to copy SAP help files and training materials and re-use them as your own posts, don't waste your time, or ours. We will take these files down when we come across them.
For the 2% who felt that experts should be happily surprised to see that someone else republished their content, not a good idea. Most people don't want others copying their content. If it's reported to us, we have the right to remove it. Get the original author's permission first, please.
For the 1% who agreed that It's OK for me to copy content from SCN and post it on other sites, this is generally not a good idea. However, there is one exception to this rule, and that is if you are the copyright owner, meaning that you originally authored the content in SCN and want to post it in other places as well. That scenario is fine. However it is a problem if someone else created the content and you take a copy and post it elsewhere as your own.
If you are ever in doubt about appropriate community behavior, please check back in the Rules of Engagement. If you don't see the answer to your question there, post the question in http://scn.sap.com/community/about.
And if you have not done so already, join the 4263 who have already bookmarked the Rules of Engagement. They are there to help us all be better Community members.